Iran: nukes won't help to us.

We hear a lot of pundits claim that Iran "must be" building nukes, at least to deter a US attack - but the Iranians themselves repeatedly say that nukes would NOT help them, and furthermore that the entire nuclear issue is a manufactured crises that hides another agenda. Read what Iran's ambassador to the UN, Javad Zarif, wrote on this issue a few months ago in Columbia University's Journal of International Affairs (.pdf file)

From a strategic point of view, Iranian leaders realize that nuclear weapons do not provide domestic stability or external security. Nuclear might did not prevent the break up of the Soviet empire, nor has it been a factor in recent conflicts in the Middle East. Iran's policy makers believe that development or possession of nuclear weapons undermine Iranian security. Even the perception that Iran is pursuing nuclear weapons negatively impacts Iran's power by decreasing its regional influence and increasing its global vulnerabilities.

Iran does not need nuclear weapons to protect its regional interests in the immediate neighborhood. In fact, to augment Iranian influence in the region, it has been necessary for Iran to win the confidence of its neighbors; an effort that will inevitably suffer from such perceptions. Furthermore, with its current state of technological development and military capability, Iran cannot reasonably rely on nuclear deterrence against its adversaries in the international arena or in the wider region. Engaging in a spiraling arms race to establish and maintain nuclear deterrence would also be prohibitively expensive, draining the limited economic resources of the country. . .

In spite of Iran's record, a massive campaign has been underway to portray Iran as a proliferator of nuclear
weapons and a threat to regional stability. The recent flurry of diplomatic activities and divisive public statements--primarily by the United States and the United Kingdom--to frighten the countries of the region and to create an anti-Iran coalition has become the centerpiece of a strategy to rescue the failed policies of the United States in the region. According to the Wall Street Journal, "The threat of Iran's rise has become for the U.S. a sort of diplomatic glue ... to patch together an alliance aimed at helping heal not only Iraq, but also Lebanon and the Palestinian conflict ... [U.S. allies] are ... apprehensive about lining up too publicly alongside the U.S. in a Cold War-style, anti-Iran bloc."

The enemy paradigm is so pervasive that the U.S. administration opted for an escalation against Iran contrary to the advice of the Baker-Hamilton Iraq Study Group. The surge in blaming Iran for the insecurity and sectarian violence in Iraq is designed to justify the escalation, while such claims cannot be explained by facts on the ground or by any calculation of Iranian interest in Iraq. In fact, U.S. vision has been so blurred by the prevalence of the paradigm, that American policymakers alienate and threaten Iran, while seeking help from those who have magnified--and instigated for their own motives--the sectarian divide in Iraq long before sectarian clashes started. This policy clearly illustrates that no lessons have been learnt from the devastation caused by many decades of the implementation of that policy in the Persian Gulf region.

The manufacturing of the "Iran Nuclear Crisis" has similarly shown that old habits die hard, and the same
tendencies that caused the misery of the last four years continue to prevail in major power circles in Washington and London. The same cabal has orchestrated a massive campaign to portray Iran's peaceful nuclear program as a threat, and in order to give that a semblance of international legitimacy, has resorted to substantial economic and political pressure to compel members of the Security Council to adopt two
unwarranted resolutions within five months.

The campaign has involved attempts to doctor the evidence in order to create a national and global scare. According to a November 2006 article by Seymour Hersh, "The CIA found no conclusive evidence, as yet, of a secret Iranian nuclear-weapons program running parallel to the civilian operations that Iran has declared." He also added that "the White House was hostile to [the CIA finding]" and may be trying "to prevent the CIA assessment from being incorporated into a forthcoming National Intelligence Estimate on Iranian nuclear capabilities" because this finding complicates "the administration's planning for a military attack against Iran."

SOURCE:
Tackling the Iran-U.S. crisis: the need for a paradigm shift.(pdf file)
by Mohammad Javad Zarif, Journal of International Affairs Spring-Summer 2007